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Wednesday, 12 November 2014

(vol 1) CHAPTER 40: “NaNoWriMo – Day 12.”

THE PREQUEL ENDITH

Coming to the end of week two of this year’s NaNoWriMo and
things are looking pretty good.

DAY 6 – 2067 words

My pace dropped later this week despite a good start on the Thursday.
I finished a piece that really develops the main characters back story through
a dream sequence showing both current issues mixed in with a tragic event from
his past. It was nice exploring that character a little more, finding out his
motivation for signing up to the army and what haunts him to avoid the magic that
is crucial to his new role and the story in general. As with a lot of things I’ve
written over the last seven days, it’ll be fun to go back through the edit and
sprinkle more details in now that I’ve discovered them.

DAY 7 – 1085 words

A busy day equals low word count. Thankfully with a nice
amount in the bank it doesn’t put me behind target. Everything I wrote today
was supposed to be in the last chapter but with the new character being
introduced and the character development I’d started yesterday kind of growing
out of control, a new chapter that was not in the original plan appeared. It
put me a day behind in the plan I’d made but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity
to dig a little deeper.

DAY 8 – 2053 words

Getting to know my characters caused a big chance in the
writing today. It was a nice amount and more than I thought I’d get done. I
sometimes have evenings where I’m struggling and pushing for my target when a
fight scene or conversation suddenly gets rolling and I’ve gone further than I
realised. Which is good, right?

DAY 9 – 882 words

I hit my first wall today. I’d noticed a small (giant) flaw with
the magic system and had spent the weekend mulling it over and trying to fix
it, knowing it was crucial to the finale of the first act. As I got closer to
the ending I got slower. I was not happy with the day 9 word count.

DAY 10 – 1703 words

Another fairly good day with the 1667 target beaten again. I
was building up to the fight scene and spent much of the session setting the
pieces into position. I’d also solved the magic system problem I was having
which led to the inclusion of something that would make the final battle even
better; airships. Trust me it will all make sense though I will have a LOT of rewriting
to do.

Something else that surprised me was a character that showed
up early on in a subplot (that never went anywhere) now seems to have popped up
in a pivotal villain role. I was surprised. Again, mucho rewrite.

DAY 11 – 2216 words

This was another one of those slogs that suddenly turned to
ice. I was struggling with the battle scene and getting bogged down around 600
words. Then, for no reason, I placed an object in the scene and everything snowballed
all the way to 2000+ words an hour
later. The battle is loosely wrapped up but I’d say it’s about 80% set.

DAY 12 – 1104 words

I’ve wrapped up the prequel story and have now moved onto the
next act. I’m at the part that was the seed of the idea all those months ago; a
man with no memory waking up on a beach and slowly discovering that his
homeland is no more.

With a blog post to write (this very one you’re currently
reading!) and time getting on, I’ve decided to stop at 1104. It’s in a good
place and I’m looking forward to getting stuck in tomorrow if I get the chance.
My priority tomorrow will be my son’s second birthday. God, how time flies.

SO IT SHALL BE
WRITTEN

The plan from the get go was to write this in short(ish)
chapters which I would then post up on the blog episodically starting next
year. The idea originally was to have the audience learn about the main
character as his memory returned.

However, there was a large back story that I wanted to write
too. Something big and bad happens for our character for him to end up like
Jason Bourne on the other side of the world. His home land is destroyed and I
had an idea how. I thought that the history itself made a good story and
wondered if, at some point further down the line, it would be a good idea to
write and release it.

The only issue I had with that is the Star Wars prequels. You
see, despite George Lucas saying he had the whole sage planned out, a lot of things
didn’t add up when you compared the Prequel trilogy to the original. Kenobi doesn’t
remember owning droids which is surprising how much time he spent with them in
episodes 1, 2 and 3. I know he was old but, come on.

(Calm)

Anyway, this isn’t the place to bash the prequel trilogy. The
point I was making is that writing the back story later on can give a writer a
whole bunch of headaches as there are so many things that have to add up. If
character A says he remembers character B from years ago and then you write a
story set ‘years ago’, well, you’d better include that scene where A and B met.
The reader is expecting it.

As the prequel I’d planned wasn’t a full scale novel I thought
I could spare the first third of my NaNo writing it. That way, when I got into
the main story I would be looking back at written history in the same way you’d
look at notes. I figured it would be easier to just continue the story from the
prequel instead of going back and filling in the blanks.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE
WORDS

I’m still on target (1109 words in credit) and am looking
forward to delving into a new contenant and new characters.

Another shout out to Adam Nelson (32651), Caitlin McColl (20082),
David Graffham (20293) and Rasha Tayaket (12066). I’m running this marathon with
these guys beside me and seeing their word counts help to keep me going.